There are now, and have in the past, been many electronic devices which seek to interact and communicate with a user in one form or another. One of the oldest examples may be the Morse code signals transmitted by the electric telegraph around 1840, which originally marked indentations on a paper tape that needed to be translated, but the operators soon learned to directly translate the message from the clicking noises made by the receiver's armature. It was Alexander Graham Bell's experiments with a harmonic telegraph which sought to transmit several telegraph messages simultaneously that led to his development of a device to transmit speech electrically, and this evolved into phone systems using an audio signal or ringer to alert the user.
With the development of the cathode ray tube (CRT), communication could be accomplished in silence by having textual data appearing on the CRT screen to replace noisy teletype machines, which were common in World War II, but today are mainly used in devices for the hearing impaired. However, the silent transmission of data occasioned the need for other kinds of alerts, which might yet be in the form of a bell, or a signal light, and even pre-recorded messages.
However, advances in electronics and the need for an alert that might be received solely by the owner or recipient and without awareness of others, particularly in a business or work setting, led to the development of tactile alerts. A tactile alert could communicate with the user to provide notification of a message received, or feedback as to input made or a task accomplished, or to signal a request for input or attention.
These tactile alerts became prevalent in beepers or pagers, which originally had been solely numeric in nature, receiving on its display the phone number to be called. An example of a paging device is shown by U.S. Pat. No. 4,352,091 to Yamasaki for “Radio Pager Having Optional Annunciating Means.” The Yamasaki device disclosed that “signals activate a mechanical vibrator to tactilely inform the subscriber that he is being paged.”
The use of tactile alerts was naturally adapted to be used in cell phones, with an example shown by U.S. Pat. No. 5,635,897 to Kuo. The Kuo patent features a decoder that “decodes the signal so obtained and generates an alarm signal, which is either an audio signal via a sound generating means, such as a buzzer . . . or a vibrating signal via a vibrator . . . to notify the user.”
Advantageous use of a vibration alert is similarly found in hand-held scanning devices, which have found prolific use which includes the retail industry for performing price checks, inventory audits, and point-of-sale transactions. An example of a device integrating a vibration alert is found in U.S. Pat. No. 5,684,287 to Robert Walts for a “Bar Code Scanner With Tactile/Vibratory Signaling Means.” Walts discloses that an “inexpensive circuit is utilized to create a tactile vibration to allow for an operator to be notified of a successful bar code scan in noisy environments” and that “this tactile vibration system can be used together with either an audible indication system (such as a beep sound), or a visible indication system (such as an LED on the bar code scanner), or both . . . .”
Although Walts further provides that the desired amount of vibration and the length of vibration time per alert may be adjusted, the patent fails to address several key drawbacks of its implementation within the device. First, the power requirements for a motor to vibrate a scanning device with sufficient amplitude to alert the user may rapidly degrade battery power, particularly in a noisy environment where the user may be jostled about or may be standing on a warehouse platform that itself experiences vibrations from the motion of vehicles. The Walts patent fails to consider this issue, and conversely even recommends implementation of a vibrating alert system in the seat cushion or foot-petal of a motorized vehicle, such as a forklift.
The problem becomes exacerbated for the hand-held device where the mass of the portable device increases, requiring ever larger vibrating motors and counterweights to be used, increasing cost, weight, and power consumption, which may be problematic for many of today's mobile computing devices. Also, use in larger portable devices means the vibration may be damped by components before reaching the user. This invention solves these drawbacks with a unique arrangement that creates and directs the vibrations in close proximity to the most sensitive part of the user's hand—to the fingers which is interacting with the device, and which may therefore be the focus of the user's attention when receiving a vibratory signal.